Churchill’s Providential Confidence –

The great statesman s religious convictions remained to the end somewhat enigmatic, even elusive. Yet Smith s succinct but exhaustive survey of the matter demonstrates that two positions can be safely ruled out: Churchill was neither an atheist (except for a brief if intense period of unbelief in his youth) nor an orthodox Christian who affirmed the Trinitarian God and the divinity of Jesus Christ. The distinguished historian and Churchill scholar John Lukacs, himself a Catholic of serious conviction, sees Churchill as above all a pagan in the noblest classical sense, even if his moral convictions were shaped in important respects by Christianity. There is some truth to this. But Churchill s magnanimity, a quintessentially and initially pagan virtue, was always accompanied by a sense of mercy, chivalry, duty, fair play, and concern for the humble masses in their cottage homes, that took the hardest edges off of classical pride.

As Smith, Paul Johnson, and Paul Addison all emphasize, Churchill had genuine solicitude for the fate of the poor, the small man, the underdog a solicitude that led him to promote salutary welfare measures as a minister in a liberal government during the Edwardian period at the beginning of the 20th century. He strongly opposed socialism but supported a modest but vigorous welfare state to help the poor and the working class. Churchill was magnanimous and chivalric in a way that owes much to the precious inheritance that is Christian ethics: his greatness of soul was marked by generosity, kindness, and a concern for the common good. Like the pagan Cicero and the Christian Edmund Burke, his soul impressively melded together magnanimity and moderation, heroic greatness with solicitude for political liberty and the survival and sustenance of civilized order. His capacious soul had ample room for the full range of the classical and the Christian virtues, and for a high-minded conception of democracy that did not reject the necessary continuity of civilization. He did not reject democracy; he aimed to ennoble it within the limits of the possible. Like Burke, he was a man of high and principled prudence.

via lawliberty.org

This smacks of hagiography but who knows, it might be true, or true-ish.